Verizon 4G ThunderBolt Speedier than Sprint Evo 4G: Report

More than 1,000 speed tests pitting the ThunderBolt, on Verizon's 4G network, against the Evo 4G, on Sprint's 4G network, found Verizon's muscle to prevail.

Sprint hardly needed any more bad news-what with AT&T angling to
purchase T-Mobile, which would make Sprint a small fish in a big
pond-but BTIG Research analyst Walter Piecyk has nonetheless offered
some: Sprint's 4G WiMax network is slower than Verizon's 4G LTE
(long-term evolution) network.

Piecyk and his team, according to the Boy Genius Report (BGR), conducted more than 1,000 tests around New York City-no easy metropolis to support, as AT&T can attest -pitting the HTC Evo 4G, Sprint's first WiMax-ready smartphone, against the HTC ThunderBolt, the first 4G-enabled smartphone to hop aboard Verizon's LTE network.

"The speed tests were conducted using the
integrated mobile hotspot functions on both devices, and the testers
were equipped with both an Apple iPad 2 and a Toshiba laptop for the
tests," BGR reported April 1. The Verizon package, they found, was
consistently quicker, averaging download speeds of 9M bps and upload
speeds of 5M bps, while the Sprint's WiMax network averaged 1M bps
loading both up and down.

Making matters worse for Sprint, Piecyk and
company also found Verizon's LTE coverage to be more reliable and to
offer better coverage than Sprint's WiMax. And, purely kicking Sprint
while it was down, the team went ahead and mentioned that the
ThunderBolt had better battery life results than the Evo 4G.

The Evo 4G-despite a shortage of parts last summer
and an over-the-air update fiasco that reportedly severely damaged some
users' phones-has helped Sprint to stand up to, as much as possible,
the Apple iPhone on rival networks. It features a 4.3-inch capacitive
touch screen, a 1GHz processor, Android 2.1, front and back cameras
and, of course, WiFi support and mobile hotspot capabilities.

The ThunderBolt-arguably an equal competitor to
the iPhone 4-also features a 4.3-inch display, a 1GHz processor, the
front- and rear-facing cameras and the like. But it comes with 32GB of
storage-and a $250 price tag, which is $50 more than most smartphones. Except for the 32GB iPhone 4, at $299.

Sprint might take heart-if it had an LTE network,
the 4G flavor expected to eventually dominate the wireless world. On
April 5, Finland-based Elektrobit Corp. introduced two new products
designed to help network vendors test the strength and data rates of
their LTE networks.

"By focusing on measuring, modeling and emulating
the radio channel, EB allows manufacturers to provide stronger products
for their audiences," the company said in a statement.

The first product, a 1-to-4 MIMO (multiple input,
multiple output) Extension, helps to raise LTE testing capacity by 100
percent, "thus enabling more cost-efficient MIMO testing with a single
product," said the company.

The other product, a "beamforthing" application,
enables network performance, reliability and coverage optimization,
"giving vendors the ability to create a competitive product portfolio
for the LTE market."

In addition to Verizon's speedy LTE network,
Sprint has AT&T to worry about. Should federal regulators approve
AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile, it'll give the carrier a
significant boost in the LTE space-which is, it has said, a primary
driver behind the deal.

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.